the business of minding your Ps and Qs | career | personal finance | investments | spending smart
Wells Fargo released some interesting news about Millennials’ personal finances: most are happy and they consider their lives meaningful. And those who are more engaged in their financial planning and investments are even more likely to consider themselves happy. Surprisingly, 73% either never plan to invest in the market, or will “never be comfortable investing in the market.”
Continue reading “News: Majority of Millennials Are Happy Despite Financial Anxiety”
Summary
- A job interview is a chance to see if the company, the organization, and team is a good fit for your professional goals and objectives
- We offer 5 questions you should explore:
- Culture
- Innovation
- Collaboration & teamwork
- Leadership
- Mentoring
- Finessing the questions: ask for concrete examples, ask multiple interviewers, listen with your eyes™, convey your engagement, relax and enjoy the moment
- Follow through: don’t forget the thank you note
A job interview is a two-way street. The word “interview” has the prefix “inter”, as in interaction. The human resources specialist, hiring manager, supervisor, team mates are interviewing you to see if you would make a good addition to their company, their team, and their projects.
You, on the other hand, have the opportunity to reciprocate the information flow. Take the opportunity to assess if the organization is a good fit for you. To this end, there are numerous articles written for the new college graduate as they begin to interview for their first full-time job. Go ahead, google for those lists of questions, study them, and prepare to answer those questions first. But before you go to your first interview, be sure to consider…
In this article, we offer our suggested questions in five key subject areas that should be important to you:
We discuss how you can finesse the delivery of these questions. We offer our take on the spectrum of possible answers, what to expect, and how you can discern the answers along with non-verbal cues (and clues).
Continue reading “Job Interview: 5 Questions You Should Be Asking”
Owned by Microsoft, LinkedIn is the premiere social networking site for professionals. It’s focused on your career. It’s great for keeping in touch with your co-workers, past, present, and future. It’s your online resume, getting endorsements, and should prove useful should you seek new career opportunities.
As the world’s largest professional network with more than 500 million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, it’s a great way to stay connected to your colleagues and customers.
Source of industry and career information. Colleagues will usually post or like interesting online content relating to the progress of your particular industry. Some will post inspirational content that will broaden your horizons.
A Resource to Find Your New Career Opportunity. Over the last few years, LinkedIn as upped its game on new job postings. Its artificial intelligence engine does a decent job at potential job matches, based on ones that you have shown interested in.
And the basic account is free. Enough said. While there is a Premium level subscription, you don’t really need it unless you are a professional recruiter or aggressively looking for a new job.
Summary
- Knowing when to ask for help is a sign of professional maturity
- Sometimes a problem demands more resources than you have at your disposal
- Realize when a nut is too tough to crack on your own, and ask for help early when additional resources can still solve the problem
- Stay engaged and see it through to success
Don’t be afraid to ask for help at work.
The work place is a team environment. Your employer wants you to succeed. When you succeed, your team succeeds, your manager succeeds, and your company succeeds. It’s a win-win, all-around win situation.
Do you always have to take on a hard problem by yourself? No.
Summary
- “Under Promise, Over Delivering” is a fundamental strategy to achieve success at work
- What is under promising: it’s not copping out of responsibilities, but rather promising the “average” of what is customarily expected
- Over delivering: is going above and beyond, providing what is expected ahead of schedule, providing results that exceed expectations, and/or anticipating questions and answering them proactively
- Consistent work ethic under the UPOD premise should get you the deserved recognition
One of the ways to advance in your career is by consistently over delivering. I’ll say that again… Consistently. Over Delivering.
This advice works even if you’re not working in company mail room. bah-dum. I’m not talking about choosing to ship between FedEx or UPS. bah-dum. I’ll be here 24/7 folks. 😉 Okay, jokes aside…
Better yet. Under Promise. Then Over Deliver. Or “UPOD” for those who appreciate acronyms.
Under Promising is not copping out of real responsibilities. If you are given an assignment, by default, your team and/or manager are expecting a certain level of performance from you. Let’s say that level of performance is “average”. Whatever average means depends on the your organization, its culture and expectations.
Should you volunteer for a task, you should be promising to do what is expected of an “average-performing” employee. Your colleagues and manager would not expect or tolerate anything less. So when the opportunity presents itself, volunteer yourself for an assignment. But manage their expectation for “average” results.
Speaking of managing expectations, be sure you and other stakeholders have a mutual understanding of:
so that there are no surprises. We speak in terms on generalities, so you’ll have to finesse the details as applicable to your situation.
In any case, remember to accept your new assignment, whether it was assigned or volunteered, with grace, enthusiasm, initiative, and engagement. Be positive. It’s an opportunity to shine.
Continue reading “Under Promising and Over Delivering (UPOD)”
